Alien Swarm

Has anyone else checked this out? Out of nowhere, Valve releases a free game. Well, at least it was out of nowhere to me. Apparently Alien Swarm was originally a mod for another engine, though I'd not heard of it before. Valve hired them and they made a source engine version. Its a top-down multiplayer co-op deal and it's free to download through steam.

I've only played with it a little in the offline practice mode, but my impressions so far are pretty good. Still sort of fiddling with the controls to get them right, and getting used to the HUD, so I haven't explored it to much. I played part of the offline mission and got everyone killed, so I haven't quite got the feel of it yet. In online play I should only have to control the one guy though, so maybe it'll work out better with real people.

edited 19th Jul '10 7:11:42 PM by Stranger

This looks...super interesting. And it's free, so bonus.

...Multiplayer, huh? What are the chances of organizing a troper game?

My medic died since her survival instinct involved running away from the squad after she spent all her ammo straight into the path of twenty aliens.

It was pretty cool since everyone had no ammo so we were slapping the aliens until they died.

Is it free forever?

I've got it, and it takes some getting used to.

Downloading. I'll check it out tomorrow. Then again, maybe not. I'm getting backlogged with freeware.

Got to level 14, maining Special Weapons. I HAET the egg destroying missions.

Got it today! Pretty cool! I also got those hats for Team Fortress 2.

Level 3, partially because my Steam library is huge.

edited 19th Jul '10 11:11:32 PM by WartysNeryon

^*5 Yes, from what I can tell it's not a limited time thing, it's just a free game. I checked out the steam forum for it, there's a lot of people with their theories on just what Valve is up to with this.

After doing a little online play, I can say it certainly presents an adequate challenge. Of course I was mostly playing on this one where you had to destroy eggs and biomass, and there were parasites all over the place, so maybe they're not all so rough. I've mostly been playing tech guy, largely because that was the class not being used by anyone else in the games I got into.

It's tricky, but I can definately see getting into this.

I played a couple of games, largely to get the hat (Hat). It makes me miss all the features Left 4 Dead had to keep the squad together...

Downloading it nao. I'll let you know. By the way, after Valve hired them, the team didn't only work on this, but they actually contributed to Left 4 Dead too. The experience with the Source engine probably helped.

Downloading now.

Hosting a game right now, if you've got me on your friend list, you can join.

It crashes. Every single time I try to play it. I'll wait for a patch. meh.

Shlap: I don't. Can I add you?

EDIT: Added you.

edited 20th Jul '10 7:19:37 AM by Ponicalica

Grog and friendly fire. Two great tastes that taste great together.

<3

On a side note: I don't have Stranger's, Deathonabun's, anelaidlives', Magus', AC's, or Bon's Steam Community tags. It's the one that shows up on your community page, NOT your account name. If you want in on some troper game action, then send a friend invite to [Troper] Shlapintogan

edited 20th Jul '10 8:11:03 AM by Shlapintogan

Try verifying the game's integrity.

Right click on Alien Swarm in your games list, go to properties, then local files, there should be a button to verify the game's files. Click that, if it "updates" then it had something wrong with the files.

^ Already did. It doesn't help. By the way, I can start the game, but the problem is when I decide to stop fiddling with the options and just start playing, it crashes no matter how I configure it. Looking at the Steam forums it's also a quite widespread problem, so at this point I'll just wait for a patch.

edited 20th Jul '10 8:42:47 AM by WUE

I downloaded it, but I'm getting that stupid Launcher Error.

Good game, at least when idiot teammates aren't teamkilling you. Hopefully they won't nickle and dime us to death with DLC and either release any new campaigns for free.

If Valve will update the game. They will do it free.

Going to be hosting another game in about half an hour or so. Mission to be decided depending on who's in.

Downloading. I'll probably miss the match, though, estimated time for the download is an hour.

Tried it, but the netcode seems to be a complete load of shite. I kept timing out and the controls were nonresponsive. Waste of download allocation, IMO.